A verdict has been reached in Jodi Arias' murder trial for the 2008 Arizona killing of Travis Alexander.

Arias, 32, was found guilty for murder in the first degree of her on-and-off lover, Alexander, a 30-year-old Mormon motivational speaker. According to police and evidence presented during the trial, Arias stabbed her victim over 27 times, slit his throat from ear to ear and shot him in the head. His body was discovered the day he was killed: June 4, 2008

Arias will learn her sentence for the crime on Thursday.

As fans of the trial eagerly await to see if Arias will receive the death penalty, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who does not represent her, gave his expertise on the upcoming sentence and said it is unlikely Arias will die by lethal injection.

A legal defense expert is confident that even if she is charged, she will not receive capital punishment because she lacks a criminal record. While the attorney agrees that the crime "was a very vicious attack" and that the "sheer viciousness could in fact warrant the death penalty," the legal expert explained that Arias' "lack of criminal record" will make it "unlikely" she will receive the death penalty.

"She has no criminal past," Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorney Dana Cole told Radar Online. "Normally we like to reserve the death penalty for really the worst of the worst - it is unlikely."

"It is very rare unless the defendant is a really hated person, and to warrant such deep hatred they really would have had to have lived a life of crime," and that the crime appeared to be more of a "great act of passion."

"She appears to be a prolific liar and she can't keep her facts straight, but that still wouldn't really qualify her for execution for her first offense, no matter how gruesome the crime."

According to police, testimonies and Arias' confession, she lied twice at first about how Alexander was killed and later admitted that she killed him in an act of self-defense. If she is convicted of the murder and the lies, she will likely face the death penalty and become the fourth woman in Arizona's history to die by lethal injection.

Watch the judge announce Arias being found guilty in the short video below.

Tags
Jodi Arias